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A bear came to supper when I was back-packing deep in Shenandoah National Park. I was able to scare it off banging pans but it came back several times, crashing though the woods well after dark until it started raining.

Came across a poacher in NM and decided to leave the area after one night because every sound I heard was him sneaking up on me to steal my stuff and do me in, right? The thought that bothered me most was whether I'd ever be found. That was the worst night I ever spent in the woods. People that don't respect the law scare me.

.

Mike

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:16 NIV)

He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one." (Luke 22:36 ESV)

While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3 ESV)

During my pre-hammock days on one of my many hiking/camping trips on Cumberland Island, GA, I got out from under my tarp in the middle of the night for a tree break. Not much of a moon and cloud cover made it an extremely dark night. I turned on my headlamp and was looking down at my tarp lines so I wouldn't trip over them. As soon as I turned and raised my head to walk forward I saw a flash of darkness, ran into something solid but "alive", bounced off and fell back on my butt. That scared the heck out of me because I knew there was nothing there before. The snort that followed didn't do much to put me at ease either. After a couple seconds of panic I remembered all the wild horses that are running around the island....and that they sometimes sleep standing up. That's when the feeling of stupid started to set in

The horse remained in place....unaware of the idiot that had just bounced off of his rear end.

One afternoon I was hiking a nearby wildlife management area. It was between hunting seasons and I had the entire 20,000 acres to myself. I passed a bear trap (used to catch and tag bears), so I was keeping an eye out for anything black. While walking near the river, about three miles from the road I heard a sudden crashing through the woods to my left. I look left and all I can see through the brush is something black at knee level and rising. I'm thinking its a charging bear standing up and only fifteen feet or so away. I have no idea how to react and just stand and watch. What I see is this bear just keeps getting taller and taller. It wasn't until the bear got to about 17' above the ground before I realized I'd scared up a turkey.

I spend a lot of time in the woods but surprisingly haven't ever run into a bear.

Not really too scary.....just hair-raising at first. Wolf.
One night laid in the hammock and listened to 5 packs howling around me in some dandy wolf harmony. I was alone. I considered it a Gift from above.
Scariest was one night on the SHT with a moose and calf crashing around in the woods near camp. Trumpeting and sounding like a battalion of giants.
Shug

One sunny, warm Sunday, while walking on a game trail in the Oconee NF in GA, I came upon a otherwise mature healthy tree which had been knocked down flat. I went around it and found another about 100 feet further up the trail. And another.

Suddenly I came out of this heavy forest into a clearing I thought had been made by clear cutting. The clearing was about 1/2 mile wide by about one mile long. The trees were all laying down, uprooted, and all facing in one direction as if a giant hand had swept down and squashed these giant pines down, hundreds of them, in one direction. Every 5th or so tree was snapped off, jagged tipped, about 20 feet up, not uprooted but snapped off like a twig. The smell of fresh cut pine was real strong in the warm sun.

A tornado had come thru this area about a week before in the middle of the night and done this. This torn up rectangle of ripped up trees was bordered on all 4 sides by an almost untouched solid treeline. All I could think of while I was standing there was, can you imagine camping about 50 feet inside the treeline, in the pitch black in the middle of the night, when that tornado came thru? The sound, with the wind and snapping off of hundreds of full size pines, just a few feet away, would have been unimaginable. How would you describe it to friends? You couldn't. It still creeps me out to this day.

Halloween night, second every hammock hang, pre-hammock forums, CBS and all. 3 am wake up to what I always describe as a banshee. It was between a wail and whoop and sounded like there were about half dozen of them or more. Used to coyotes in this are, known to have a pack and it wasn't them. I was probably about a mile or so away and the farms dogs around us started going into a frenzy. Went on for an hour. Never heard anything like it or since in the woods and only came across 1 audio clip that sounded exactly like it, one ever.

Halloween night, second every hammock hang, pre-hammock forums, CBS and all. 3 am wake up to what I always describe as a banshee. It was between a wail and whoop and sounded like there were about half dozen of them or more. Used to coyotes in this are, known to have a pack and it wasn't them. I was probably about a mile or so away and the farms dogs around us started going into a frenzy. Went on for an hour. Never heard anything like it or since in the woods and only came across 1 audio clip that sounded exactly like it, one ever.

Could it have been an owl call? I've heard something similar over here and got told it might have been a Tengalms or Short Eared owl ..